The battle over Arianna Adan

Federal Judge William H. Walls has scheduled a hearing Tuesday to determine when 6-year-old Arianna Adan should be deported to Argentina. He ruled last week that the little girl, an American citizen born in the United States, should be deported to the South American country and become a "ward of the state" pending the outcome of a custody battle between her unmarried parents.
Walls, for the second time, ruled her mother, Elena Avans Mazza, had failed to prove her daughter faced a grave risk of harm by the deportation and possible custody by her father, Ariel Adan. Adan invoked an international treaty in asking Walls to deport Arianna. Just days before Walls' first ruling two years ago, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the child's deportation and ordered a new trial.
The judge conceded Adan, who has spent weeks in the Union County jail after pleading guilty to violating a restraining order obtained by Mazza, abused the child's mother and might have abused the little girl. He said, however, that the evidence for the abuse of the child was not "clear and convincing."
Mazza says she hopes to file an appeal and obtain a stay of Walls' order before the judge deports Arianna, who has spent most of her life in the United States. She was scheduled to begin second grade in St. Anthony's School in Elizabeth in the fall.
Judge Walls' most recent decision is not yet available on lien, but the appellate decision is available at www.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/053045p.pdf.
For information on the Hague Convention, the treaty invoked by Arianna's father, see http://hcch.e-vision.nl/index_en.php?act=text.display&tid=21.